For a number of reasons, it would be useful if a home entertainment device or system were able to determine if people were present in the room. If viewers leave the room in order to go to the kitchen, for example, the system could go into a low power consumption state, perhaps by dimming or powering down the display, or by shutting down completely. In this way, power could be conserved. If recorded media were being viewed, the playback could be automatically paused when a viewer leaves the room.
In addition, the next generation of smart televisions may be service platforms offering viewers several services such as banking, on-line shopping, etc. Human presence detection would also be useful for such TV-based services. For example, if a viewer was accessing a bank/brokerage account using the TV, but then leaves the room without closing the service, a human presence detection capability could be used to automatically log off or shut down the service after a predetermined time. In another case, if another person enters the room while the on-line banking service is running, the human presence detection could be used to automatically turn off the banking service for security or privacy reasons.
Detecting human presence would also be useful to advertisers and content providers. Actual viewership could be determined. Content providers could determine the number of people viewing a program. Advertisers could use this information to determine the number of people who are exposed to a given advertisement. Moreover, an advertiser could determine how many people viewed a particular airing of an advertisement, i.e., how many people saw an ad at a particular time and channel, and in the context of a particular program. This in turn could allow the advertiser to perform cost benefit analysis. The exposure of an advertisement could be compared to the cost to produce the advertisement, to determine if the advertisement, as aired at a particular time and channel, is a worthwhile expense.
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